Valentine’s Day is over, but the good ship LONNOL is still available for booking. Perhaps you yet have tokens of affection you would like to ship out. If they have even the slightest touch of nature about them, we’re longing to publish them. Please search your files for poems, short fiction, short essays, mp3s of readings of your work or of other work that’s in public domain, your original artwork, etc. and share them with us and our readership. Less than two weeks remains in February, but if need requires, we will keep things afloat through March.

Along with submissions from our readers, we’ll have a fond feelings haiku chain, to be initiated soon.

Also, February 24th is WIZ’s birthday. We’ll be five years old. To celebrate, we’ll be offering one or more of WIZ’s old movie giveaways. Giving our readers presents on our birthday is something we really enjoy doing. To “win” an old movie, all you’ll have to do is read each movie’s review and comment in the comment section. WIZ will contact you with further instructions about how to receive your free DVD.

In the Northeast, winter has been ridiculous harsh and relentless. Here in the Four Corners region, we seem to be trembling on the brink of an early spring. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. Full steam ahead.

We’ve received a few tokens of affection but are longing for more. Please search your files for poems, short fiction, short essays, mp3s of readings of your work or of other work that’s in public domain, your original artwork, etc. and send them winging our way.

Along with submissions from our readers, we’ll have a winter wonderland/fond feelings haiku chain, to be initiated soon.

Also, February 24th is WIZ’s birthday. We’ll be four years old. To celebrate, we’ll be offering one or more of WIZ’s old movie giveaways. Giving our readers presents on our birthday is something we really enjoy doing. To “win” an old movie, all you’ll have to do is read each movie’s review and comment in the comment section. WIZ will contact you with further instructions about how to receive your free DVD.

It has been a hard, difficult, overlong (some would say interminable) winter. Let’s use February to warm things up.

We’re issuing an open call for nature-themed, love-laced writing and visual arts: original poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), videos or other media that address the subject of love while referencing nature, even if lightly. By the same token, we’re interested in nature writing raveled up with themes of love.

If you’ve written artsy Valentine wishes to someone beloved—or perhaps created a video Valentine or made a live reading of a sonnet or lyric poem that’s original to you—or if you’ve written a short essay avowing your love for people, critters, or spaces that make you feel alive, please consider sending it to WIZ. Click here for submissions guidelines.

We hope you’ll join our month-long celebration combining two of the most potent natural forces on the face of the planet–love and language.

It’s Love of Nature Nature of Love Month on Wilderness Interface Zone, and we’re looking to publish love abroad.Â Do you have a message of friendship and love you’d like to send someone? WIZ is looking for original poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), videos or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.Â We’ll also take the flipside: Weâ€™ll publish work about nature intertwined with themes of love.Â Besides original work you’re welcome to send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.Â So if you have a sonnet youâ€™ve written to someone dear to your heartâ€“even and perhaps especially your pet hamster Roley Poley or faithful horse Old Paintâ€“or perhaps a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space near and dearâ€“please consider sending it to WIZ.Â Click here for submissions guidelines.

Besides rolling out a (hopefully) heart-embroidered carpet of love-art, we’ll also be running two WIZ, nature-laced, romantic DVD giveaways, Typhoon, starring Dorothy Lamour and pre-Music Man Robert Preston, and a Pre-Hays Code movie, King of the Jungle, starring scantily clad Buster Crabbe as Kaspa the Lion Man.

We hope you’ll join the celebration.Â Let’s warm up February with fond feeling.

Fire in the Pasture: Twenty-first Century Mormon Poetry, edited by frequent WIZ contributor Tyler Chadwick, made its debut at 2011 end in impressive style. Tyler reports that Fire in the Pasture has “risen as high as #2 in both Hot New Anthologies and Hot New Inspirational & Religious and #12 in Hot New Poetry.”Â The Kindle edition “slipped into the Kindle Store’s top 100 Best Sellers in 20th Century American Poetry.”Â Congratulations, Tyler and Th.!Â For WIZ readers’ information, several WIZ contributors, including Sarah Dunster, Jon Ogden, WIZ’s new contributing editor Jonathon Penny, Steve Peck, Sarah Page, and myself have work included in its pages.Â Ãngel Chaparro Sainz, another frequent WIZ contributor, wrote the anthology’s afterword.Â It’s a pleasure to see that so many WIZ folk threw kindling into Fire in the Pasture’s multi-colored flames.Â A poem by Elizabeth Pinborough, another poet published in Fire in the Pasture, will appear on WIZ in February.

Karen Kelsay, a fine formalist poet and constant lyrical presence here at WIZ, has begun a publishing company, White Violet Press. You can reach the press’s accompanying blog with submission guidelines by clicking on the image to the left.Â While most publications are by invitation only, WVP will look at unsolicited manuscripts year round. White Violet Press is now open for submissions, so WIZ writers–especially WIZ writers of a formalist persuasion–please go have a look and support Karen in her new creative venture.

In November 2011, my essay, “Plato’s Alcove,” was awarded finalist status and an honorable mention in Torrey House Press’s creative nonfiction competition.Â The essay tells about my first trip to the desert.Â An earlier version won 1st place in the 2003 Utah’s Original Writers Competition.Â The version I sent to Torrey House is a more highly stylized, mixed-genre experiment. Want to read “Plato’s Alcove” at Torrey House’s website?Â Go here.

Profound apologies for the lateness of this next announcement, but Fortunate Childe Publications published its autumn anthology, Vintage, in October 2011.Â WIZ contributors Karen Kelsay and Carla Martin-Wood also have verse published therein (search on their names in the search bar to the left to read their poetry published on WIZ).Â Also featured in Vintage: four of my poems, including “Deer in the City,” “Closing Time,” and two poems not on WIZ.Â Leslie Ellison, publisher of Fortunate Childe, nominated my poem “Deer in the City,” which also appears at WIZ, for a Pushcart Prize.Â This is my second Pushcart Prize nomination. Thank you, Fortunate Childe!Â To find information about Vintage or purchase copies of this lovely seasonal anthology, click on the picture to the left.Â I will soon be buying a few for myself. Several poets included in the anthology recorded readings of their work that you listen to here.

WIZ will be running its popular Love of Nature Nature of Love event again in February.Â To celebrate Valentineâ€™s Day, all month long weâ€™ll publish poetry, essays, blocks of fiction, art, music (mp3s), video or other media that address the subject of love while making references to nature.Â Or it could go the other way around: Weâ€™ll publish work about nature that also happens to give a nod to love.Â Weâ€™re seeking submissions of original work or you can also send favorite works by others that have entered public domain.Â So if you have a sonnet youâ€™ve written to someone dear to your heartâ€“even and perhaps especially your pet hamster Roley Poley or faithful horse Old Paint–or perhaps a video Valentine or an essay avowing your love for a natural space dear to your heartâ€“please consider sending it to WIZ.Â See the submissions page in the navigation bar above for submissions guidelines.

Providing grounds for the greening of human language

NOTE: After being on hiatus, we're back, and looking for submissions of original writing, information and announcements of interest to our readers, and original art and photographic images. Please read our "About" and "Submissions" sections before sending material.